The Simple Things In Life

We always talk about the simple things in life and how they seem to make us the happiest, but we choose so often to ignore them or make them more difficult to reach than what they really are. What keeps you from enjoying the simple things? For me, it’s no one else but me unfortunatly ,that keeps me from enjoying them. The everyday readings can cover a lot of territory in the Bible so with that, like so many others, I want to choose one area and comment on the simple things and the value of speaking up out of your circumstances.
First, there is a servant girl. She is a young girl that was captured and brought back and became a servant to Naaman’s wife. As she served in the home and learned about her master, she started to care about them. What we here in America often forget is the reality of powerful nations and the whims of men. America has been blessed by providing equal rights to any man or woman and that is a huge blessing that we take for granted. In other countries this is not the case. You have to know how to survive. You can observe some people and what they say about others. Some people would say this girl was a traitor, because she allowed herself to be captured, and then she worked as a slave. She had no real life to begin with or she would have escaped or died trying! On the other hand people may say, “she was very wise, she learned the system, she was alive, and she looked out for the welfare of those that were taking care of her, therefore giving her a better life in return.”
After observing men like Daniel and Joseph, hearing stories of men in prison camps that some men hated because they served the enemy, but not realizing the extra food, supplies, medicine, even water that they were able to smuggle to other prisoners because they choose to put their energy to helping any way they can. I see this in the life of this girl. She was taught a love for God and knew of Elisha the prophet of God. She carried that love of God into this home of a master despite the circumstances she was thrust into. She had to make a choice to live or to die. What choice would you make? Some say to die would have been heroic, some say to die would have been cowardly, some say to live would have been heroic, and some say to live would have been cowardly. My personal opinion does not matter here but yours does, because it determines how you live your life. So how do you live your life, how will choose to live your life, not making a choice of how to live is making a choice.
I do have to say this, I admire a man or woman who take the worst of circumstances, endure hardship, and bless one another in the midst of it. For a man or woman to do something like that, makes me believe they have grit, inner strength, passion, and a willingness do what others say is impossible. I admire this young girl. She lived, she brought value to those who were around her, and she brought life into a house. Now to speak to the character of Naaman. Even though this man was a man of God he was a “valiant soldier”. One thing you can observe, the girl had to feel safe and feel a great need to go the extra mile to share with Naaman that there was a prophet of God in Israel that could heal him. He had to have shown a great deal of love and care, not only to his family, but also to the servants of his house, for them to want good for their master, and for her to want her master to find healing speaks to who he was as a man. Are you that kind of boss? Do your employees look out for your welfare because they know you look after them?
Last but not least, the things God asks us to do seem to be so complicated when they are really so simple. Look Naaman, go to the Jordan, jump in and out 7 times and you’ll be clean! “What can’t I go climb a mount find a rare herb bring it back to you, can’t you come out here and do some kind of dog and pony show to call God down to heal me? Surly it can’t be as easy as go to this dirty, murky, muddy river and bathe in it 7 times. Surely it’s not that simple!” Yes it is that simple. Often we try make God’s commands for us more complicated than they really are. May today be the day that you look to what you thought was complicated and see that it was an easy task to do the whole time, you just needed to do it Gods way and not the way you thought it needed to be done.